Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly • Hacker News Board

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#91

Post by EthanHeilman » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:36 PM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #84

mindcrime wrote: post #11

Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis. In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history, their shared knowledge and confidences, the fee…

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

>Radical, post-modern feminists like the author do not pepper their otherwise-reasoned arguments with logical fallacies; their arguments are based upon logical fallacies.

What evidence do you have the author is post-modern? I looked around on the authors blog and didn't see anything post-modern.

You are dismissing a large number of thinkers, this is all radical post-modern feminists, out of hand. I don't understand why or what that has to do with your other claims.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#92

Post by kmm » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #14

JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Far too often, logical fallacies are invoked in order to run away from an argument. I think this is the core point: the fallacy-lobbers are often looking to dismiss the entire conversation rather than trying to participate in it. There's no counter-argument; instead, the message is, "You're too dumb to bother with." That may sometimes be true, but it's never conducive to enlightening discussion.

I totally agree with his assessment of the misuse of the term ad-hominem too. An ad-hom fallacy is "your argument is wrong because you're an immoral moron", not "your argument is wrong for these reasons, you immoral moron". The latter is not very nice and probably shouldn't be encouraged, but it's not an ad-hominem because the insult is not part of the argument, just an unpleasant aside.

It colours the argument and tries to make the other party sounds bad. Obviously this is done with the intent to "win" the argument. And thus "your argument is wrong for these reasons, you immoral moron" is a disingenuous way to reason, which comes close to a fallacy in my opinion.

Oh, and I sometimes see ad-hominem used to refer to the whole of slurs, condescension and things that are said to make me feel/look bad, regardless of whether an argument is going on.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#93

Post by ezy » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:40 PM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #84

mindcrime wrote: post #11

Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis. In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history, their shared knowledge and confidences, the fee…

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

Please define radical, post-modern feminist. Thanks.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#94

Post by Avshalom » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:41 PM UTC

kmm wrote: post #66

zorpner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But do not accuse me of being sexist. But you are. So am I -- we all are. Our culture and society are so riddled with pervasive sexism that we all exhibit sexist behavior at baseline, and the responsible thing to do is try and identify it within ourselves so that we can determine how best to negate it. If someone were truly lacking sexism, that would be an extraordinary claim, and would require extraordinary eviden…

There's a big difference between acknowledging the sexist baseline that exists in society, something which we should all strive to improve, and saying a certain subset is fundamentally (more) sexist, which is quite discriminatory and unfair towards that subset. > And if you'll forgive me for saying so -- that's not about to come from someone who says things like "I just knew this was going to be about sexism." No, I…

Okay so to review: you do admit that you're sexist because you exist in society but don't want to be accused of being sexist?

Also zorpner was not asking for forgiveness, that was a rhetorical flourish.

Which is actually a big part of what the article is talking about: the apparent inability of some people to accept that humans don't speak in Z-notation or something.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#95

Post by hacker789 » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:46 PM UTC

Avshalom wrote: post #90

hacker789 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

So wait, thinking "guys, elevator come-ons are not such a good idea" is "Fair enough" is radical, post-modern feminism?

I firmly feel there's nothing wrong with asking someone in an elevator whether they'd like to get coffee.

That said, to answer your question, my answer is no. Someone responding to "guys, elevator come-ons are not such a good idea" with "fair enough" doesn't remotely make someone a radical, post-modern feminist.

Why do you ask?

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#96

Post by EthanHeilman » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:50 PM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #84

mindcrime wrote: post #11

Humans typically communicate in a way that resists shallow logical analysis. In a real conversation, people use words rather than terms, make utterances rather than sentences, and employ a wider variety of inference methods than modus ponens. A great deal of what is communicated and inferred in a conversation depends on context; the speakers and audience, their history, their shared knowledge and confidences, the fee…

I agree completely with what you're saying, but I think you're being far too generous in your interpretation of the author's point. Some people accuse others of logical fallacies for the wrong reasons—they want avoid responding to one or more points they know the other person is trying to make, so they lazily hide behind extraneous non-arguments to avoid confronting any substance. At the same time, some people employ…

hacker789 previous comments have an anti-feminist bent (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5573103) so I would suggest that it is coloring hacker789's judgement of this piece. This is probably why hacker789 talks about the authors motivations or secret intentions (similar to what I am doing to hacker789 now).

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#97

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #80

dragonwriter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, in a good debate, the fallacies are taken as (Bayesian) evidence, even if obviously imperfect. I don't believe there is any reasonable definition of "good" where this is true. I think this characterization must rest on a misunderstanding of what the fallacies actually are . > Appeal to authority/experts: The fact that experts believe something is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).…

>In the context of deductive, rather than inductive, argument. The very context that you should never use, in other words, which was exactly my point! If you're going to require all evidence deductively imply a conclusion (i.e. have an infinite likelihood ratio), then you're excluding all real-world evidence, and making the very fallacy I described (which I didn't realize was claimed for something else). So it seems…

> The very context that you should never use, in other words

No, that's not other words for what I said.

> which was exactly my point!

Yes, that you should never use deductive reasoning was one of your points (and a ludicrous one). No, that point isn't an "in other words" of anything in my response.

> If you're going to require all evidence deductively imply a conclusion

Having some contexts within which deductive reasoning is used (what you are arguing against categorically) is not equivalent to requiring all evidence to deductively imply a conclusion. This is the fallacy of the excluded middle, arguing that if you aren't exclusively using inductive reasoning, then you must be exclusively using deductive reasoning.

> (i.e. have an infinite likelihood ratio)

Deductive implication isn't equivalent to having an "infinite likelihood ratio". First, because deductive reasoning is about necessary (logical) rather than probabilistic implication, so talking about likelihood ratios for it is misplaced, and second, because, insofar as it might make sense to talk about a "likelihood ratio" for deductive logic, the ratio would be 1, which is very much finite.

> then you're excluding all real-world evidence

Well, yeah, real world evidence is prior to a deductive argument, not part of it; insofar as it contributes to a deductive argument, it does so as part of an inductive justification for the premises of a deductive argument.

> and making the very fallacy I described (which I didn't realize was claimed for something else).

The thing you described is not a fallacy.

> So it seems you essentially agree with using the "appeal to authority" fallacy in exactly the way I warned against.

You didn't warn against using the appeal to authority fallacy, you endorsed (not "warned against) using something you called the "the appeal to authority fallacy", and then defined that as something that is not what the "appeal to authority fallacy" actually refers to.

> And that you generally endorse (the genuine fallacy of) rejecting evidence simply because it doesn't guarantee a conclusion.

No, I don't, and nothing in my post stated that, or supports your claim that I endorse that. That's just something you invented.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#98

Post by tokenadult » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:03 PM UTC

Rayiner mentions the Federal Rules of Evidence in his comment. Also writing from a lawyer's perspective, I'll mention the elaboration of rules of evidence that has developed both in formal rules like the federal rules and in centuries of common-law tradition in deciding cases. Presentation of evidence at trial is about letting the fact-finder (sometimes a jury, sometimes a judge) hear from both sides in an adversary proceeding about what happened, and why what happened matters. Some forms of evidence are "prejudicial"--that is, they are excluded from even being mentioned at trial because they trigger known human cognitive biases. Other forms of evidence are "irrelevant"--even if they are completely truthful, they bear no legal or logical relationship to how the case will be decided based on the other evidence at trial. Unlike Internet arguments, court trials also exclude some forms of highly relevant evidence to protect other social goals, for example by reducing incentives to police misconduct or violations of privacy.

In law, there is a well developed body of precedent and rule on evaluating the credibility of witnesses. To show evidence that a witness has reason to lie (not just that the witness is directly contradicted by someone else's testimony) is highly relevant in most trials. If you are a lawyer who has ever read a case transcript, you will have no trouble believing that some witnesses testify in court under oath and penalty of perjury, with cross-examination by the other side, and yet still lie. This happens every day. To put some balance into a system in which any witness might have an incentive to lie, the rules of evidence at trial allow introduction of evidence that the witness is, for example, someone who has been convicted of "crimes involving dishonesty," or has a financial interest in a factual issue under dispute, or so on. Some statements about a witness are plainly irrelevant, even under that principle. It will not do to say "The witness was convicted of jaywalking," because jaywalking is not regarded as a crime that shows a tendency to be untruthful.

Another aspect of the law of evidence that has heavily influenced my thinking about what people know and how they know it, and thus influenced my behavior in online discussion, is "basis of knowledge" considerations. (I sometimes explicitly mention my basis of knowledge when commenting in some threads. Here my basis of knowledge is having studied the law of evidence with a professor who literally wrote the book on the subject

http://www.evidencecasebook.com/author2.asp

when I was in law school.) If a witness testifies, "I saw him shoot the victim," and you can show that it was dark on that occasion, and the witness has bad myopia and wasn't wearing his eyeglasses, you are a long way toward undermining the witness's testimony on completely legitimate grounds. I am often puzzled why many Hacker News readers are so credulous about stories when it is plain that the person writing the story has no basis of knowledge adequate for making the extraordinary claims submitted with the story. (University press office hype about the future implications of preliminary research findings frequently has this weakness,

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

as is well known in the scientific community but still too little known here on HN, much less Reddit.)

When a Hacker News commenter suggests that someone has either bias (perhaps as an investor in a company) or insufficient basis of knowledge (perhaps as a rookie investigator before peer review and replication has happened), altogether too many HN replies will accuse the commenter of an "ad hominem" argument. They don't notice that arguments about bias and about lack of sufficient knowledge are even completely legitimate aids to truth-finding on controversial issues. Yes, don't rely on a list of fallacies (at least, not on the list alone) to guide your thinking, but also on deep thinking about the structure of the argument and adequacy and impartiality of the data.

(All of the above said, I like the late Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit on the whole, and think applying it to more Hacker News threads would raise the level of discussion here. See also Paul Graham's essay "How to Disagree"

http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

for more suggestions about how to disagree thoughtfully and productively.)

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#99

Post by kmm » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:04 PM UTC

Avshalom wrote: post #94

kmm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between acknowledging the sexist baseline that exists in society, something which we should all strive to improve, and saying a certain subset is fundamentally (more) sexist, which is quite discriminatory and unfair towards that subset. > And if you'll forgive me for saying so -- that's not about to come from someone who says things like "I just knew this was going to be about sexism." No, I…

Okay so to review: you do admit that you're sexist because you exist in society but don't want to be accused of being sexist? Also zorpner was not asking for forgiveness, that was a rhetorical flourish. Which is actually a big part of what the article is talking about: the apparent inability of some people to accept that humans don't speak in Z-notation or something.

Uhm, I was trying to be funny. You're assuming I have the social skills of a potato.

I suppose what I've said is pretty clear. I'm no saint and I'm sure I am in some ways a little sexist (although I hope less than average). Yet I don't want to be called especially sexist, or have a group I might be part of be accused of being fundamentally sexist. Sexism is a spectrum.

Re: Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly

#100

Post by icambron » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 10:10 PM UTC

Avshalom wrote: post #51

khyryk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't think I'm going to be afforded the same courtesy if I start ranting about how all Valley girls are sluts because of my few experiences, for instance, even if it happens to be my genuine expression of emotion. Hoping that everyone's interpretation of certain emotions converges on something similar (and civil) is just asking for a clusterfuck.

Turns out you don't live in a vacuum ¡social context! That said you can rest easily knowing that people would probably not attempt to convince you valley girls were not sluts by pointing out your logical fallacies.

> Turns out you don't live in a vacuum ¡social context!

Is that social context that women are considered purely emotional creatures incapable of logical thought? I ask because you seem to be suggesting that women should get a pass for emotionally-charged reasoning whereas men shouldn't.

I do hold women to high standard of discourse (GP's term) and I find that they meet it with the same frequency as men.